Carrie Best’s Clarion put Viola Desmond’s case in print

Carrie Best, who was born in New Glasgow, N.S., in 1903, started a newspaper called The Clarion in 1946, and its December issue that year told the story of Viola Desmond’s arrest at the town’s Roseland Theatre, according to The Canadian Encyclopedia and CBC News.

The Canadian Encyclopedia describes the paper as one of the first in Nova Scotia owned and published by Black Canadians. Best founded it with her son Calbert. It began as a 20-by-25-centimetre broadsheet and was incorporated in 1947.

CBC reported that the paper started as a single sheet covering life around the town’s Second Baptist Church. It became a multi-page, tabloid-sized paper in December 1946, and the relaunch issue carried Desmond’s story.

Desmond, a Halifax beautician, was removed from the main floor of the Roseland Theatre, charged with tax fraud over a one-cent tax and jailed overnight, the encyclopedia said. She was convicted and fined $26. Best featured the case in The Clarion and organized a fund to cover the court costs, according to the same entry. Our earlier report on Desmond’s conviction over the one-cent tax sets out the legal record.

Best had her own history with the theatre. The encyclopedia said that in December 1941, Black high school girls were forced out of the Roseland’s whites-only section. A few days later, Best and Calbert bought balcony tickets, which were the seats reserved for Black patrons, then went to the main floor. When asked to leave, they refused, and police removed them.

Both were convicted of disturbing the peace and fined. Best then sued the theatre for assault and battery, damage to her coat and breach of contract. The case was heard on May 12, 1942, and failed, and the judge ordered her to pay the other side’s costs, the encyclopedia said.

Five years after that ruling, she had a newspaper of her own. The sources reviewed for this article do not say whether the lawsuit shaped her decision to publish, so the sequence is noted here without drawing a conclusion from it.

The Clarion ran under that name until 1956, when it was renamed The Negro Citizen and began circulating nationally, according to the encyclopedia. Best also hosted a radio program, The Quiet Corner, which debuted in 1952 and ran for 12 years on four Maritime stations. From 1968 to 1975 she wrote a Human Rights column for the Pictou Advocate. She published her autobiography, That Lonesome Road, in 1977.

Her work was recognized late. She became a member of the Order of Canada on Dec. 18, 1974, and was promoted to officer in 1979. She died on July 24, 2001, in New Glasgow, and was named to the Order of Nova Scotia posthumously in 2002. Desmond received a pardon in 2010.

The paper itself is harder to find than its reputation suggests. CBC reported that the Nova Scotia Archives holds 33 issues dated 1946 to 1949, that a collection from Mrs. W.P. Oliver was the source, and that the issues were microfilmed in 1987. Archival assistant Anjali Vohra told CBC the archives had not seen an issue of The Clarion since Oliver’s collection arrived, and the archives asked the public to check attics and family papers for more. The archive count comes from that CBC report, and we have not confirmed whether it has changed since.

The gap matters because the paper was written by a Black publisher for Black readers, and only 33 issues from a 10-year run are known to survive. The exclusion it reported sits alongside the pattern documented in Nova Scotia’s Black-only schools and in Ontario’s Dresden restaurant vote. An earlier Black publisher, profiled in our report on Mary Ann Shadd and the Provincial Freeman, also used a newspaper to make that case.

The sources reviewed here differ on small details of the 1941 theatre incident. This article follows The Canadian Encyclopedia for the 1941 events and CBC for the paper’s early format and archive holdings.

If you find reporting like this useful, consider supporting Canada News Media, an independent Canadian newsroom with no corporate parent.